Thanksgiving 2010

We enjoyed a simple but very yummy Thanksgiving dinner at home this year. Yes, Hawaii is now our home and is actually beginning to feel like it. I remember Ellen saying it took her about 6 months of living in LA for it to feel like home, well that must be the magic number for me, too.

Bird Park

The Bird Park is located in the Volcano National Park and is only about 15 minutes from our house. It's an "island" of very old, very large trees where birds are plentiful. The reason it's an island is because this piece of land has not had a lava flow on it for a very long time whereas all around it has. There is a mile long trail that is perfect for our fam to hike.

Disaster and Dogs

We took the dogs in the car with us today to the beach. It ended up being a disaster. We took the dogs with us in a very shallow rock bottom part of the beach. Everyone enjoyed it, but in the car on the drive home one of the dogs got sick since he had been drinking ocean water. Then Kahiki had a very stinky accident on the back seat before we stopped so he could finish his business.
THEN, Indy burst a package of barbeque sauce from McDonald's in the front seat. So we smelled the bbq sauce very strongly most of the way home, which was better than the other two competing smells.
I took some pictures of the dogs in the car just as we were leaving the house, before they made our car smell like a dumpster.

Hot ponds

I took the kids to swim in the hot ponds today. It's basically a pool filled with a mixture of ocean water and thermally heated stream water. It is full of small tropical fish that have little fear of people.

Funny things about Hawaii

There are lots of funny, different things that I've learned about the people and culture in Hawaii. Here are just a few.

-Instead of your kid's friends calling you Mr. Mark or Ms. Emily, they say Uncle Mark and Aunty Emily, or simply Uncle or Aunty.

-At restaurants your waiter will ask you, "Are you pau?" which means are you finished.

-Trash is called Rubbish

-Men and children can go to Walmart, Home Depot, grocery stores, and most other establishments just wearing a swimsuit,
"No shoes, no shirt, no one gives a sh**."

-You can take your pets, especially small dogs, into the stores listed above, as long as they can ride in the shopping cart.

I can't think of anymore right now, but I will update this thread with more as I see them.

Family pic at Pohoiki

My Aunt Kay and Uncle Joe came for a short visit from Seattle last weekend. We had a great time showing them around the Big Island! They took this picture of us on the Pohoiki shore where Mark likes to body board. I wish we had gotten a picture of all of us, too!